Sorry for the low-tech rerouting, but: 

If you reached this page because of a link to a numbered item that is no longer on my main page, you can get to it by adding "#" and the number -- e.g. "#1021" -- to the end of the URL above.

In which our highly literate cat graduates from reading newspapers to mastering the IBM ThinkPad.

6/28/05, 10:39 p.m. (Link here)

Um, this Elizabeth Drew article about Congressional and K Street corruption has been out for a month now, and in turn it refers to reports published considerably previously. So here's my question: Why has this material not by now formed the basis for multiple impeachments and successful prosecutions? Would it not have done so amid the comparative rectitude of the Nixon Administration?

[UPDATE: I mean, some investigation is happening but where's the outrage?]

6/27/05, 6:37 p.m. (Link here)

Out of idle curiosity -- has anyone checked what percentage of National Guard members currently serving in Iraq have regular jobs involving domestic U.S. police or corrections work?

6/26/05, 1:18 p.m. (Link here)

It's Gay Freedom Day here. OK, actually it's the Pride parade. But, so help me, while pride and freedom are both good things isn't freedom the point? Isn't that why it's our Fourth of July? Eh, anyway, it's a good thing. We put our tea in covered mugs and went up to see the Dykes on Bikes open the parade per usual. "Women's Motorcycle Contingent," whatever. An ambulance came whooping up the block of Seventh Street where a big group of the front-riders, surrounded by a five-deep crowd of spectators, were waiting to cross the parade route. Much roaring of engines, very little fuss, no panic, and the ambulance got through. Fast. We're the City That Knows How, or didn't you know?

6/26/05, 1:11 p.m. (Link here)

So I'm confused about something: we have spent a good bit of the last forty years getting into anti-'domino-effect' military quagmires whose long-term purpose has presumably been the geopolitical containment of China. So then why on earth is our national economic policy toward China so friendly, and why does it reward U.S. companies for exporting jobs, raw materials, technical competence, and even some corporate ownership to that very same place?

6/24/05, 2:59 p.m. (Link here)

New from the happy world of hi-tech:

Three new alert triggers have been added in version 2.4: speeding, stopping, and application off. Now you can request to be alerted when employees exceed predefined speed limits or stop for too long. As with other alerts, this can be done for all employees, or just turned on for a few individuals.

And if some employees turn off WorkTrack in order to avoid the location tracking, the new application on/off trigger can be configured to remind the employee to turn WorkTrack back on, or to alert his supervisor to the fact that it was turned off.

6/24/05, 1:15 p.m. (Link here)

I don't ordinarily talk about my "work" blog on my home site, but today I've done a roundup on the Kelo case that might interest readers here. It's an eminent-domain decision against homeowners who made a compelling moral case against having their houses taken for an urban redevelopment project. The debate that has followed is fascinating both for the obvious reasons and as an illustration of the way property-rights rhetoric can bend political definitions.

6/23/05, 6:03 p.m. (Link here)

Mr. Rove can think what he wants about his made-up generic straw "liberals." I and most people I know understood immediately that the 9/11 attacks threatened us not only with danger from abroad, but also with a new political Ice Age at home. And, yes, we got both. Dreading the one does not exclude dreading the other.

[Later... Josh Marshall notes, "These comments are meant to outrage you." They're meant to polarize, that is. So I suppose the best thing to do, as usual, is not to feed the trolls. So sad that we've got trolls in the White House now.]

6/22/05, 8:53 p.m. (Link here)

Y'know, the "I'm rubber, you're glue" style of political discourse is getting old.

6/22/05, 8:07 p.m. (Link here)

This is what I posted last spring about Arthur Koestler's understanding of what torture is and how idealists persuade themselves to torture prisoners for what they see as the greater good. Unfortunately, it bears repeating.

6/22/05, 8:05 p.m. (Link here)

Yes, they do get up and about between photos.

6/20/05, 11:59 a.m. (Link here)

We call this one "The Persistence of Edgie."

6/18/05, 12:31 p.m. (Link here)

A rare weblogger who is in fact a soldier and who does expect to serve in Iraq says he does expect to be called nasty names if he tortures people when he gets there.

6/18/05, 12:09 p.m. (Link here)

Amazing chart here from The Big Picture showing Democrats and Republicans base their responses to consumer confidence surveys on different facts. Apparently, Democrats think more about the U.S. economy overall; Republicans think about their own personal finances.

A commenter at TBP responds, "So republicans are the party of self-interest, and democrats are the party of empathy? Interesting..." I dunno -- nothing's ever that simple -- but I wonder.

6/17/05, 6:56 p.m. (Link here)

6/17/05, 2:32 p.m. (Link here)

It's not an Improbability Drive, but if only Douglas Adams had lived to see Amazon do this.

6/16/05, 2:02 p.m. (Link here)

More blogs picking up on Microsoft's complicity in Chinese censorship. Good.

[Update: TAPPED has joined in.]

[Further update: New (to me) coinage with a future: the Great Firewall of China.]

[Further further update: No, it's not a new coinage. In fact a search on that phrase pulls up a bunch of interesting articles on the broader issue of Chinese Internet censorship.]

6/14/05, 5:46 p.m. (Link here)

The useful Stateline service notes yet another worry about Florida touch-screen voting.

6/14/05, 1:35 p.m. (Link here)

"Embrace the Iterative Way!"

If you want to be a copywriter for Wal-Mart you get to do that, and so, so much more.

6/14/05, 9:58 a.m. (Link here)

Y'know, unlike some of our TV commentators I don't happen to think criticizing one's elected representatives is unpatriotic. But it does bug me, a lot, to see a newspaper investment column placidly giving advice on how to bet against your own country by investing in Chinese currency and stocks. In the same business section of the same paper there's a story about Microsoft collaborating with Chinese censors. On Microsoft's own Chinese-language portal, it seems, people who type the word "democracy" will get an error message reading, "Prohibited language in text, please delete." That, now, is wrong.

[UPDATE: Harry's Place having picked up the above, a commenter there adds, "Then we'll have the bizarre situation of people in the West talking about human rights and freedom and meaning nothing by it and Chinese meaning human rights and freedom and not talking about it."]

6/13/05, 2:07 p.m. (Link here)

I wandered into the San Diego Union-Tribune site for unrelated reasons and ended up at this shocking article on catastrophic border-region pollution. Worth reading if only to remember how bad things still do get.

Incidentally, I don't know if this should bug me as much as it does, but there's an example in the article of one more person casually using the historically freighted phrase, "final solution." Don't people find those words creepy any more?

6/13/05, 10:30 a.m. (Link here)

Jon Carroll says the obviously necessary this morning about the position of centrist Beltway Democrats, which is, as usual, prone.

6/11/05, 7:01 p.m. (Link here)

Does it strike anyone that the campaigns against gay marriage may really just rephrase the ancient conservative fear of people forming or re-forming households without the authorities' blessing? Is it specifically about gayness really?

6/10/05, 7:49 p.m. (Link here)

The San Francisco Chronicle's Anna Badkhen is a hero. She is a seasoned war correspondent who learned her job working among Russians. She knows how to do honest journalism while embedded among military people who have no sense of irony, and hence no sense of what they are telling and showing her. This week she is embedded in Samarra, and, yes, the Chron is using the obvious hair-raising headline out of John O'Hara. If Anna Badkhen were a man her name would already be familiar to you.

6/10/05, 12:53 p.m. (Link here)

The logic of the market escapes me. Organic Monterey Jack at our local health food market is very nearly twice the price per pound of cooked frozen chicken strips at the Trader Joe's four blocks away.

6/10/05, 11:16 a.m. (Link here)

Yes, more catblogging -- it's Friday, innit?

Our Edgie may look nervous next to the Leaning Tower of Laundry but don't underestimate her. This morning she brought in another dead rat.

6/8/05, 8:52 p.m. (Link here)

Funny old world:

Large company, looking to cut costs, replaces machines with people.

6/8/05, 6:39 p.m. (Link here)

It's a cold wet world out there today. Cat knows where to watch it from. Smart cat.

6/7/05, 11:01 a.m. (Link here)

Interesting to see where Schwarzenegger and his supporters are talking about generating "a phenomenon of anger" against public-employee unions, including, apparently, even the police and fire unions, not just the teachers and nurses (who I guess it's OK to disparage because anything called "the helping professions" must vaguely have to do with liberals...).

It's probably just coincidence or zeitgeist, but last night during "Seinfeld" the San Francisco Fox news affiliate ran one of these politically slanted news teasers. It showed policemen sitting at a bar in some kind of restaurant or club, said they were earning overtime pay, and suggested the public was getting soaked. The announcer's harshest tone of voice was saved for "the union boss" who, he told us, would defend such behavior. ("Union boss"? What memory bank did they dig that up from?) Now, I have my differences with police and prison-guard union reps who defend brutality. I suppose I'd object if featherbedding were involved too. But the idea of campaigning against the people who answer our calls for help by disparaging their unions? Strange and bad.

6/7/05, 9:40 a.m. (Link here)

E.J. Dionne, much better, on same.

6/6/05, 10:29 p.m. (Link here)

Today the San Francisco Chronicle allowed Pat Buchanan, one-time Nixon stooge and present hard-right demagogue, to occupy its pages with a baleful column -- phrased as commentary, not as memoir -- against the man who turned out to be Deep Throat. If this is the Chron's idea of balance, then, heck, let's have some disinterested thoughts from Ken Lay on utility regulation. And from Al Capone on tax auditors. And from Dracula on garlic and rosewood.

Balance? Look, Nixon and his men committed serious crimes from which the national dignity has still not recovered. Bringing in Nixon's PR man to insult the witnesses in public isn't "balance," it's a revival of Nixon's own dishonesty.

6/5/05, 10:35 p.m. (Link here)

In lieu of catblogging, a sign seen by J. in Berkeley today:

Please Drive Slowly
One Young Dog
One Old Dog
Several Stupid Dogs.

6/5/05, 4:06 p.m. (Link here)

The CCLPEP conference on teaching and remembering Japanese American Internment history was mainly an honor to attend. Then there was this awkward moment Saturday morning. Law professors Greg Robinson and Eric Muller, possibly best known for debunking Michelle Malkin, were on a panel with Dale Minami, of the Asian Law Caucus and the coram nobis cases, to talk about "Civil Rights Today: The Lessons of the Japanese American Experience." Their speeches proceeded solemnly but collegially, received by "how true" nods and applause. Except where, for a few minutes, Robinson brought up parallels between the old racisms and antigay scapegoating. He suggested the topic was appropriate to discuss in San Francisco. Light chuckles in the audience. Then quiet, as people realized they hadn't been supposed to laugh. He kept talking about antigay discrimination. He named a number of Japanese American activists who had been active in both Internment redress campaigns and gay rights groups. There was, yes, some applause and no more laughter, and certainly everyone up on the panel was receptive, but I at least thought I detected less audience enthusiasm than for the rest of the comments at the session. There was a brief Q&A at the end of the panel and none of the questions mentioned gay rights.

So there's work left to do, even among civil rights people.

6/4/05, 9:30 p.m. (Link here)

Huge thanks to Crooked Timber for pointing the way to a compactly brilliant post on how not to write fiction.

6/3/05, 6:09 p.m. (Link here)

I know most people who read this blog are outside San Francisco, but I just have to crow about something. Finally finally finally the county welfare regulations are online. These are the regs for the program serving single adults, designed and operated by county officials, so that state-published regulations are no use. So it's only now, finally finally finally, that people who receive public benefits in this town can find out what the rules are without going to an advocacy office or having to take the worker's word for it.

I've felt very strongly about this ever since hearing an LA welfare official say it would be a "mockery" to provide copies of the rules to GR recipients because "they wouldn't understand them."

Releasing the regs in easily accessible public format this way is a big advance not only in transparency but in respect for recipients. Good news for once. It's nice.

6/3/05, 12:42 p.m. (Link here)

One more example of why to worry about Bush's judicial nominations. Bob Egelko of the SF Chron reports today on a sensible decision by the Cal Supremes. The case is Warrick v. Superior Court and it creates a greater chance that a criminal defendant can get a judge to consider prior complaints about an accusing officer. It doesn't say the defendant gets to read the whole texts of those complaints; it doesn't say the judge has to base a decision on the complaints; it just says that if a defendant claims the officer is lying, and it's possible previous other defendants have complained against the same officer in the past, it shouldn't be made too difficult to get those complaints before the judge, or for the judge to give contact information to the defense for those past complainants. Doesn't mean the judge has to believe the defendant, nor the prior complainants if any. Just means that in a matter as important as a criminal trial, a little more relevant evidence ought to be considered.

The California Supreme Court is not an especially liberal body. Warrick was a 5-2 decision. The dissent was written by Janice Rogers Brown, Bush's currently debated nominee to the D.C. Circuit, which is in turn within reach of the Supreme Court. Enough said.

6/3/05, 11:28 a.m. (Link here)

Woodward and Bernstein were my undergraduate heroes. Of course I wanted to read Woodward's account of the friendship with Mark Felt that led to those "Deep Throat" disclosures. It made sad reading. It clarified that Woodward didn't sell out later; he was a mentor-chasing suck-up from day one. Suggests in turn that the qualities making a good journalist may not be what I thought they were.

And Felt himself? He sounds like the perturbed office clerk in Thurber's "The Catbird Seat." I guess mysteries usually are more fun than revelations.

6/1/05, 5:02 p.m. (Link here)

We heard this song played in the background at an Indian rodeo. Once in a while things like this remind you that Woody Guthrie had a cousin who moved to Nashville.

6/1/05, 10:23 a.m. (Link here)

This great lady is my cousins' grandma. Proud of her.

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